Pasted from my guild site: AoC Info Thread

m3zcl4n

Hello all. Just thought I'd pop in and past this thread from my guild forum. I am in charge of compiling information from up and coming MMORPGs, and I recently did a thread on AoC. I packed in a lot of info that one would have to spend a while digging for, along with links to sources with more details. Mods, feel free to toss if it's not up to par, and everyone please excuse my guild inside jokes and references to guildies.

PASTE

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Well, I finally got around to readin up exenstensively on Age of Conan, and I gotta say, the whole deal sounds pretty sweet, and it looks fn gorgeous.

So here is the deal. In case you didn't know, the Conan franchise didnt start or end with the Arnold flicks. The world of Conan started and continues in a long series of books, which are reportedly very dark and gritty, much more so than the films. We're talkin a dirty, brutal world with booze, wenches, slaves, psycho priests, crazy barbarians, etc, and of which are the guiding force behind this game. In fact, and this may be considered gimmicky by some, the developers are intent on keeping this game with a Mature rating (as shown by the gobs of blood in the trailers, and the boobs in some of the previews). Naturally this is a fantasy game, with your mix of melee, ranged, magic combat.

First, let me tell you what were the selling points before I actually researched the game.

Why Mezzy Likes

1. HOOOLY SHIT the game is pretty. Just watch the trailers and you'll see that the game world is amongst the best I've ever seen. We're talking Oblivion quality graphics or better in an MMORPG. Beautiful vistas as far as the eye can see, gorgeous towns, all in all, LEET GRAFFEKS LOOTZ. Downside to that is you'll need phat putar lootz to be able to run it in it's glory. I imagine that if you can run Oblivion, you should be good with Conan. Still, not everyone can go out and buy a new video card I realize, so this may be a hurdle.

2. PvP! So, everyone has gotten the idea of me bein somewhat of a carebear PvEer, which is true to some degree. But for those of you old schoolers, I'm sure you have memories of me rippin into some TXF and SHDWZ, rockin their worlds with my POISEMZ and later my stun baton. I was a mean PvPing son of a bitch, and you know, that is still in me provided that it is done well. Age of Conan is supposed to be all out open PvP in the Border Kingdoms from what I've read (havent read much mind you, i plan on researching this further), in order to keep true to the cutthroat nature of the IP. PVP will earn you something called Blood Coins that you can lose and gain from killin players, that can be used to buy PvP gear or feats (specials). I have visions of base and city battles when I think of AoC, which brings me to the biggest selling point for me.

3. Player Cities! That along with the existance of social clothing should speak to the nostalgic old DOTs who miss hanging out in RR wearin your fly suits and dresses or your pink hotpants. And, you can read from that link, not only is there the possiblity of player attacks on your city, there is a mechanic in the game that if you build a city, the computer will build a rival city nearby that will attempt a siege on your city periodically. This means you'll hafta gather your members to defend the city, which sounds like a blast to be honest.

Those three things it definitely has over Tabula Rasa. I know it's under NDA Lonk, and I wouldnt ask you about game mechanics yet, but would it possible to compare what you've seen of both games in regards to the game world? TR looks extremely drab next to AoC, but then again, they havent shown much.

Anyway, once i started digging, I figured a good place to start would be with the kind of classes you can be. But before I go into that, I'll tell you about the "cultures" you can select, as what culture you start with governs what classes are available (just like in WoW, where a Gnome couldnt be a priest, and an NE couldnt be a mage).

The Cultures

There are 3.

The Cimmerians - These folks are the people of Conan himself. You get the idea of what they are like at the beginning of the film. They are the rough and dirty barbarian types. They favor brute force as a means to solve problems. Very much people of the land. They worship Crom, who is a gloomy god type, who imbues them with strength at birth then doesnt give a fuck aboutem. Prayer is seen as weak. <Lloid>CROM!</Lloid>

The Aquilonians - These guys are compared to a post-Constantine Roman society in it's strengths and weaknesses. Their culture is wealthy, sophisticated, religous, and face tensions from within their lands due to many within their borders were conquered people. Conan is the King of Aquilonia.They worship Mitra, which is much more active, but not as brutal as other gods. The Aquilonians are kinda like the middlemen between two extremes. You have the primitive Cimmerians on the one side, on the other side....

The Stygians - For those of you who have seen the movie, the James Earl Jones character in the first movie was a Stygian. Aesthetically, they are like the Egyptians, and are very intune to magic. Like the Aquilonians, they are governed by a theocracy, but theirs is much more ruthless and bloodthirsty. They are very much governed by Set, their god, who is represented by the serpent. These guys are the virgin sacrificers. They value knowledge over brute force as a means to power, and are very cunning at getting it. Think warlocks, rogues and such.

Classes

At the beginning of the game, you start off by just picking your people. At level 5, you get to choose from the 4 basic classes.

Soldier - Melee, tanks.

Mage - Basic Nukers.

Rogue - Stabbity Tmash style dps, light armor.

Priest - PHAT HEALZ

Pretty self explanitory, yeah? This is where your culture comes into play. You are limited to certain classes based on what you picked as determined by the lore. For instance, Cimmerians cant be mages, as those barbarian types would chop off your head with a sword before they ever touched a book to learn a spell.

The class availablities based on culture are as follows.

Cimmerians - Soldiers, Rogues, Priests

Aquilonians - Soldiers, Rogues, Priests

Stygians - Mages, Rogues, Priests

As you progress, you can further specialize your class. Each of the 4 classes has about 3-4 second tier subclasses that you can pick to suit your playstyle. It during this time that things get really interesting. You get classes like Dark Templars, which are like evil WoW Pallies and Warlocks mixed together in terms of gameplay. From rogue, you can become Assasins, or the WoW Hunterish Ranger.

List of Currently Known Subclasses

Soldier - Conqueror, Dark Templar, Guardian

Mage - Herald of Xotli, Demonologist, Necromancer, Lich

Rogue - Barbarian, Ranger, Assassin

Priest - Priest of Mitra, Scion of Set, Druid of the Storm, Bear Shaman

Really cool stuff in there. I'm haven't been able to find out if you'll also be limited to what subclass you can pick based on race, tho one might assume just by looking at the Priest classes. Still, if there are no limitations, the lack of Mages in the Aquilonians and Cimmerians would be negated to some degree. I highly recommend you check out those subclasses to find something that might interest you.

Further down, you have Prestige Classes that will further aid your activities. Each class has bonuses to gathering, and each has a unique ability that will help in stuff ranging from setting up the Player Cities, Crafting (which I'll discuss further down), combat and adding to your party, and gathering via npc help. Each one also has a crafting specialization or two.

They are as follows.

Lord - can specialize in Alchemy and Architect

Commander - can specialize in Weaponsmithing

Crafter - can specialize in all crafting trees, including Gemcutting

Master - can specialize in Armorsmithing

So how's all this put into play?

Combat

Funcom promises to deliver a "revolutionary" combat system to the MMORPG genre. Honestly it does sound pretty interesting on paper. There are no Target Locks or Auto Aims or Auto Attack in AoC. You swing your sword and hit air if you arent properly facing your enemy. Yet, you stand in front of 3 dudes and swing you'll hit all 3. Ranged attacks require you to aim your shots, and actually pull back the arrow to fire. Nukers will get to learn spell combos for phat damage, as will meleers. The game will place a big emphasis on combos and timing. As a meleer, it seems you'll be able to control the direction of your swing or something, and you'll learn combos that will be pulled off by swinging your weapon in a given series of directions. With spells, it is my understanding that you will be able to link spells to pull off more elaborate spell combos. Everything is still governed by rolls.

Quests seem to be your standard fare. The game will have Instances. There also seems to be a pretty robust Character Creation system, for those of us who were sorely dissapointed by WoW's cookie cutter toons that all look the same. The game also touts a crafting system. There isnt much detail as to the actual process of crafting yet, only that the devs are hoping to balance loot vs player made items to the point where player made items actually matter.

Okay, I've been researching and writing this for a good 4 hours now. You jerks better have read all this.

Honestly, this seems like something more DOT's could slip into. Thoughts?

 

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